- Henry L. Benning,
Georgia politician and future Confederate general, writing in the
summer of 1849 to his fellow Georgian, Howell Cobb: "First then, it is
apparent, horribly apparent, that the slavery question rides insolently
over every other everywhere---in fact that is the only question which
in the least affects the results of the elections." [Allan Nevins, The Fruits of Manifest Destiny
pages 240-241.] Later in the same letter Benning says, "I think then,
1st, that the only safety of the South from abolition universal is to
be found in an early dissolution of the Union." The entire letter
can be found on this website, here.
- Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi (future Confederate President):
"A large part of the non-slaveholding States have declared war against
the institution of slavery. They have announced that it shall not
be extended, and with that annunciation have coupled the declaration
that it is a stain upon the Republic ..." [Speech in the Senate,
Feb. 13--14, 1850; see The Congressional Globe, 31st Congress, 1st Session, Appendix, p. 149.] The entire speech is on this website, here.
- Davis,
from the same speech: "The slave trade, however, so far as the
African was concerned, was a blessing; it brought him from abject
slavery and a barbarian master, and sold him into a Christian land ...
The slave trade has been the greatest source of permanent blessing to
him."
- Davis, again (same speech): "We claim that it is the duty of the Government to protect every species of property."
- Stephan
Dodson Ramseur,
future Confederate general, writing from West Point (where he was a
cadet) to a friend in the wake of the 1856 election: "...Slavery, the
very source of our existence, the greatest blessing both for Master
& Slave that could have been bestowed upon us." The full
letter is on this website, here.
- Albert Gallatin
Brown,
U.S. Senator from Mississippi, speaking on Spt. 11, 1858, with regard to the several
filibuster expeditions to Central America: "I want Cuba . . . I want
Tamaulipas, Potosi, and one or two other Mexican States; and I want
them all for the same reason -- for the planting and spreading of
slavery." [Battle Cry of Freedom,
p. 106; full speech given on this website, here]
- Brown,
again, from the same speech: "I would spread the blessings of slavery,
like the religion of our Divine Master, to the uttermost ends of the
earth."
- Brown,
yet again, December 27, 1860: "Mr. President, it seems to me that northern
Senators most pertinaciously overlook the main point at issue between
the two sections of our Confederacy. We claim that there is property in
slaves, and they deny it. Until we shall settle, upon some basis, that
point of controversy, it is idle to talk of going any further." [Quote taken from The Congressional Globe,
36th Cong., 2nd Sess., p. 201.]
- Senator James Bayard
(Democrat of Delaware), in a letter to his son, dated December 12,
1860: "The sole cause of the existing disunion excitement which
is about to break up the government is the war which has been carried
on for years past all manner of devices by the antislavery fanatical
sentiment upon more than $2,000,000,000 of property." [Bayard papers]
- Richard Thompson
Archer
(Mississippi planter): "The South is invaded. It is time
for all patriots to be united, to be under military organization, to be
advancing to the conflict determined to live or die in defence of the
God given right to own the African"---letter to the Vicksburg Sun,
Dec.
8, 1859.
- Representative
Benjamin Stanton,
Republican of Ohio, January 15, 1861: "Mr. Chairman, I desire to state,
in a few words, what I regard as the real question in controversy
between the political parties of the country. The Republican party
holds that African slavery is a local institution, created and
sustained by State laws and usages that cannot exist beyond the limits
of the State, by virtue of whose laws it is established and sustained.
The Democratic party holds that African slavery is a national
institution, recognized and sustained by the Constitution of the United
States throughout the entire territorial limits, where not prohibited
by State constitutions and State laws...All other questions about which
we differ grow out of this, and are dependent upon it..."
[Congressional
Globe, 36th Cong., 2nd Sess., (Appendix), p 58]
- Senator Robert
M. T. Hunter
of Virginia: "There is not a respectable system of civilization known
to history whose foundations were not laid in the institution of
domestic slavery." [Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 56.]
- Richmond Enquirer,
1856: "Democratic liberty exists solely because we have slaves . . .
freedom is not possible without slavery."
- Atlanta Confederacy,
1860: "We regard every man in our midst an enemy to the institutions of
the South, who does not boldly declare that he believes African slavery
to be a social, moral, and political blessing."
- Lawrence Keitt,
Congressman from South Carolina, in a speech to the House on January
25, 1860: "African slavery is the corner-stone of the industrial,
social, and political fabric of the South; and whatever wars against
it, wars against her very existence. Strike down the institution of
African slavery and you reduce the South to depopulation and
barbarism." Later in the same speech he said, "The anti-slavery party
contend that slavery is wrong in itself, and the Government is a
consolidated national democracy. We of the South contend that slavery
is right, and that this is a confederate Republic of sovereign States."
Taken from a photocopy of the Congressional Globe
supplied by Steve
Miller.
- Keitt
again, this time as delegate to the South Carolina secession
convention, during the debates on the state's declaration of causes:
"Our people have come to this on the question of slavery. I am willing,
in that address to rest it upon that question. I think it is the great
central point from which we are now proceeding, and I am not willing to
divert the public attention from it." Taken from the Charleston, South
Carolina, Courier,
dated Dec. 22, 1860. Keitt became a colonel in
the Confederate army and was killed at Cold Harbor on June 1, 1864.
- Senator Louis
Trezevant Wigfall
(of Texas); December 11, 1860, on the floor of the Senate; "I said that
one of the causes, and the one that has created more excitement and
dissatisfaction than any other, is, that the Government will not
hereafter, and when it is necessary, interpose to protect slaves as
property in the Territories; and I asked the Senator if he would
abandon his squatter-sovereignty notions and agree to protect slaves as
all other property?" [Quote taken from The Congressional Globe, 36th
Cong., 2nd Sess., p. 58.]
- Isham Harris,
Governor of Tennessee, January 7, 1861, (Messages of the
Governors of
Tennessee, p. 255); "The systematic, wanton, and long continued
agitation of the slavery question, with the actual and threatened
aggressions of the Northern States and a portion of their people, upon
the well-defined constitutional rights of the Southern citizens; the
rapid growth and increase, in all the elements of power, of a purely
sectional party,..." The full message can be found on this
website, here.
- Senator John J.
Crittenden
of Kentucky (Democrat), March 2, 1861, (Congressional Globe, page
1376); "Mr. President, the cause of this great discontent in the
country, the cause of the evils which we now suffer and which we now
fear, originates chiefly from questions growing out of the respective
rights of the different States and the unfortunate subject of
slavery..."
- Henry M.
Rector, Governor of Arkansas, March 2, 1861, Arkansas Secession
Convention, p. 44: "The area of slavery must be extended
correlative
with its antagonism, or it will be put speedily in the 'course of
ultimate extinction.'....The extension of slavery is the vital point of
the whole controversy between the North and the South...Amendments to
the federal constitution are urged by some as a panacea for all the
ills that beset us. That instrument is amply sufficient as it now
stands, for the protection of Southern rights, if it was only enforced.
The South wants practical evidence of good faith from the North, not
mere paper agreements and compromises. They believe slavery a sin, we
do not, and there lies the trouble."
- Thomas F.
Goode, Mecklenburg County, Virginia, March 28, 1861, Virginia Secession
Convention, vol. II, p. 518, "Sir, the great question which is
now
uprooting this Government to its foundation---the great question which
underlies all our deliberations here, is the question of African
slavery..."
- Q.M. Sgt.
Thomas Low, 23rd New York
Artillery, diary entry, March 29, 1862:
“… As long as we ignore the fact (practically) that Slavery is the
basis of this struggle so long are we simply [cutting] down a
vigorously growing plant that will continually spring up and give new
trouble at very short intervals. We must emancipate.” [Chandra Manning, What This Cruel War Was Over,
p. 49.]
- Lt. P.V.
Wise, First Wisconsin, quoted in the Wisconsin State
Journal, January
20, 1862: “Our Government handles slavery as tenderly as a
mother would
her firstborn… When shall it be stricken down as the deadly enemy of
freedom, virtue, and mankind?” [Chandra
Manning, What This Cruel War
Was Over, p. 76]
- Sgt.
James Jessee, Eighth Illinois, diary entry, December 31, 1863:
“As sure
as God is God and right is right, so sure may we look for the war to
end... in the accomplishment of its glorious object, ... the liberation
of this oppressed and down trodden race... I would prefer ten years war
yet and no more slavery, than Peace tomorrow, with slavery. Such is my
abhorance of that Barbarous institution.” [Chandra Manning, What This
Cruel War Was Over, p. 119]
- John P.
Jones to his wife, August 24, 1862: "I am getting to be more and
more
of an abolitionist. I believe that this accursed institution must go
down. We can never have a permanent peace as long … as this curse
stains our otherwise fair insignia. The ruler of nations can never
prosper these United States until it blots slavery from existence. He
can no longer wink at such atrocities. This must be the grand, the
final issue. I hope the powers that be will soon see it and act
accordingly. It may be that we have not suffered enough yet, that the
bones of a few more thousands of soldiers must bleach in the dismal
swamps of the south, that a few more homes must be desolated, that
suffering and desolation be more widely sown throughout the land, but
come it must, postpone it as we may. Thank God a few bright spots are
luring up in the distant horizon, small it is true. But they will
expand and grow brighter. We are to guard rebel property no more, and
fugitives are no longer to be returned when they come within our lines.
Thank God the American Soldier is no longer to be used as a slave
catcher, no longer to drive helpless women around at the point of the
bayonet, and be obliged to obey orders that makes him almost ashamed of
being an American Soldier.” [Donald
Benham Civil War Collection,
Manuscript Division, Library of Congress]
- Rt.
Rev Stephen Elliott, D.
D., Rector of Christ
Church, and Bishop of the Diocese of Georgia: “We can find that interest only in the
institution of slavery which was the immediate cause of this revolution.” [Sermon preached on Sept. 18,
1862.]
- Ibid: “The great revolution through which we are
passing certainly turns upon this point of slavery, and our future destiny is
bound up with it.
- William
Grimball to Elizabeth Grimball, Nov. 20, 1860: "A stand
must be
made for African slavery or it is forever lost." [James McPherson, For
Cause and Comrades, p. 20]
-
- William
Nugent to Eleanor Nugent, Sept 7, 1863: "This country
without
slave labor would be completely worthless. We can only live & exist
by that species of labor; and hence I am willing to fight for the
last." [James McPherson, For Cause and Comrades, p. 107]
- William
M. Thomson to Warner A. Thomson, Feb. 2, 1861: "Better,
far
better! endure all the horrors of civil war than to see the dusky sons
of Ham leading the fair daughters of the South to the altar." [James
McPherson, For Cause and Comrades,
p. 19]
- George
Hamill, March, 1862: "I never want to see the day when a negro
is put
on an equality with a white person. There is too many free niggers. . .
now to suit me, let alone having four millions." [Diary quoted in James
McPherson, For Cause and Comrades,
p. 109]
- Methodist
Rev. John T. Wightman, preaching at Yorkville, South Carolina:
"The
triumphs of Christianity rest this very hour upon slavery; and slavery
depends on the triumphs of the South . . . This war is the servant of
slavery." [The Glory of God, the Defence of the South (1861), cited in Eugene Genovese's Consuming Fire (1998).]
The entire sermon can be found on this website, here.
- G. T.
Yelverton, of Coffee County, Alabama, speaking to the Alabama
Secession
Convention on January 25, 1861: "The question of Slavery is the rock
upon which the Old Government split: it is the cause of secession."
- S. C.
Posey, Lauderdale County, Alabama, speaking to the Alabama
Secession
Convention on Jan. 25, 1861:"Mr. President, the fierce strife we have
had with the Northern States, which has led to the disruption of the
Government, is a trumpet-tongued answer to this question.They have
declared, by the election of Lincoln, “There shall be no more slave
territory–no more slave States.” To this the Cotton States have
responded by acts of secession and a Southern Confederacy; which is but
a solemn declaration of these States, that they will not submit to the
Northern idea of restricting slavery to its present limits, and
confining it to the slave States." [The History and Debates
of the Convention of the People of Alabama, p. 209.]
- John
Tyler Morgan, Dallas County, Alabama; speaking to the
Alabama
Secession Convention on January 25, 1861:"The Ordinance of Secession
rests, in a great measure, upon our assertion of a right to enslave the
African race, or, what amounts to the same thing, to hold them in
slavery." [The History and Debates
of the Convention of the People of Alabama, p. 196.]
- Jefferson
Buford, Barbour County, Alabama, speaking to the Alabama
Secession
Convention, on March 4, 1861:"Now, Mr. President, I submit that while
our commission is of much higher import and dignity, it is, in one
respect, by no means so broad. We are sent to protect, not so much
property, as white supremacy, and the great political right of internal
self-control---but only against one specified and single danger alone,
i.e. the danger of Abolition rule." [The History and Debates
of the Convention of the People of Alabama, p. 286.]
- Pvt.
Thomas Taylor, 6th Ala., to his parents, March 4, 1862:
"we are
ruined if we do not put forth all our energies & drive back the
invaders of our slavery South." (Chandra
Manning, What This Cruel War
Was Over, p. 66).
- Pvt.
Jonathan Doyle, 4th La., to Maggie, May 27, 1863: "We must
never
despair, for death is preferable to a life spent under the gaulling
[sic] yoke of abolition rule." (Chandra
Manning, What This Cruel War
Was Over, p. 108).
- From the
Confederate Constitution:
- Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 4: "No bill
of
attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of
property in negro slaves shall be passed."
- Article IV, Section 3, Paragraph 3: "The
Confederate States may acquire new territory . . . In all such
territory, the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the
Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and
the territorial government."
- From the
Georgia Constitution of 1861:"The General Assembly shall have no
power
to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves." (This is the entire text
of Article 2, Sec. VII, Paragraph 3.)
- From the
Alabama Constitution of 1861: "No slave in this State shall be
emancipated by any act done to take effect in this State, or any other
country." (This is the entire text of Article IV, Section 1 (on
slavery).)
- Alexander
Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy, referring to the
Confederate government: "Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone
rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white
man; that slavery . . . is his natural and normal condition." [Augusta Daily
Constitutionalist, March 30, 1861.] The entire
speech is on this website, here.
- On the
formation of black regiments in the Confederate army, by promising the
troops their freedom:
- Howell Cobb,
former general in Lee's army, and
prominent pre-war Georgia politician: "If slaves will make good
soldiers, then our whole theory of slavery is wrong." [Battle Cry of
Freedom, p. 835.]
- A North Carolina newspaper editorial: "it is
abolition doctrine . . . the very doctrine which the war was commenced
to put down." [North Carolina Standard, Jan. 17, 1865; cited in Battle
Cry of Freedom, p. 835.]
- Robert M.T.
Hunter, Senator from Virginia, "What did we go to war for, if
not to protect our property?"
- CS Brigadier
General Clement Stevens: "If slavery
is to be abolished then I take no more interest in our fight. The
justification of slavery in the South is the inferiority of the negro.
If we make him a soldier, we concede the whole question." [Cited in James C. Nisbet, Four Years on the Firing Line, pp. 172--173; my thanks
to Jon Morrison, of Dalton, GA, for pointing me to this item.]
- John B. Jones, clerk in the Confederate War Department,
reacting to reports in Northern news papers that the Confederacy had
recruited black soldiers: "This is utterly untrue. We have no armed
slaves to fight for us, nor do we fear a service insurrection." [Diary entry for March 20, 1863---Rebel War Clerk's Diary.]
- Senator
William Bigler, Pennsylvania, January 21, 1861: "The fundamental
cause
of the imperiled condition of the country is the institution of African
servitude, or rather, the unnecessary hostility to that institution on
the part of those who have no connection with it, no duties to perform
about it, and no responsibilities to bear as to the right or wrong of
it. Each event, touching the extension, contraction, or control of this
institution, as it has presented itself, has added to the mutual
exasperation and strife between the North and the South, until men have
become convinced that to have peace, as to all things else, the North
and the South must be completely separated as to this institution of
slavery." [Congressional Globe, p. 489]
- Alfred P.
Aldrich, South Carolina legislator from Barnwell: "If the
Republican
party with its platform of principles, the main feature of which is the
abolition of slavery and, therefore, the destruction of the South,
carries the country at the next Presidential election, shall we remain
in the Union, or form a separate Confederacy? This is the great, grave
issue. It is not who shall be President, it is not which party shall
rule---it is a question of political and social existence." [Steven
Channing, Crisis of Fear,
pp. 141-142.]
- Elijah Chastain, of Fannin, delegate to the Georgia Secession Convention:
Stated that it was his belief that "every man, woman and child in the
Southern States should own a slave---He believed the best plan to do so
is to open the African slave trade." [Athens Southern Watchman, Jan. 30, 1861,
page 2; the reporter added that this produced a "slight sensation in the galleries."]
- John C.
Pelot, delegate from Alachua County to the Florida secession
convention, January 3, 1861: "Gentlemen of the Convention: We
meet
together under no ordinary circumstances.The rapid spread of Northern
fanaticism has endangered our liberties and institutions, and the
election of Abraham Lincoln, a wily abolitionist, to the Presidency of
the United States, destroys all hope for the future." [Journal of the
convention, p. 3]
- John B.
Baldwin, Augusta County delegate to the Virginia Secession Convention,
March 21, 1861: "I say, then, that viewed from that standpoint,
there
is but one single subject of complaint which Virginia has to make
against the government under which we live; a complaint made by the
whole South, and that is on the subject of African slavery...."
[Journal of the
Virginia Secession Convention, Vol. II, p. 139]
- Baldwin
again: "But, sir, the great cause of complaint now is the
slavery
question, and the questions growing out of it. If there is any other
cause of complaint which has been influential in any quarter, to bring
about the crisis which is now upon us; if any State or any people have
made the troubles growing out of this question, a pretext for agitation
instead of a cause of honest complaint, Virginia can have no sympathy
whatever, in any such feeling, in any such policy, in any such attempt.
It is the slavery question. Is it not so?..." [ibid, p. 140]
- Catherine
Ann Devereux Edmonston, December 30, 1864: "We have
hitherto
contended that Slavery was Cuffee's normal condition, the very best
position he could occupy, the one of all others in which he was
happiest... No! Freedom for whites, slavery for negroes. God has so
ordained it." From: The Journal of a Secesh
Lady: The Diary of
Catherine Ann Devereux Edmonston, 1860-1866.
- During
the 1830's there was the Gag Rule controversy in Congress, during which
Southern politicians tried to block even the presentation of petitions
on the subject of slavery. The following quotes come from speeches made
in the House and Senate during this time, taken from William Miller's
book, Arguing About Slavery:
- John C.
Calhoun, Senator from South Carolina: "The defence of human
liberty
against the aggressions of despotic power have been always the most
efficient in States where domestic slavery was to prevail."
- James H.
Hammond, Congressman from South Carolina: "Sir, I do firmly
believe
that domestic slavery, regulated as ours is, produces the highest
toned, the purest, best organization of society that has ever existed
on the face of the earth."
- Hammond again,
from later in the same speech: "the moment this House undertakes to
legislate upon this subject [slavery], it dissolves the Union. Should
it be my fortune to have a seat upon this floor, I will abandon it the
instant the first decisive step is taken looking towards legislation of
this subject. I will go home to preach, and if I can, practice,
disunion, and civil war, if needs be. A revolution must ensue, and this
republic sink in blood."
- Henry Wise,
Congressman (and future governor) from Virginia: "The principle
of
slavery is a leveling principle; it is friendly to equality. Break down
slavery and you would with the same blow break down the great
democratic principle of equality among men."
- From the
diary of James B. Lockney, 28th Wisconsin Infantry, writing near
Arkadelphia, Arkansas (10/29/63): "Last night I talked awhile to those
men who came in day before yesterday from the S.W. part of the state
about 120 miles distant. Many of them wish Slavery abolished &
slaves out of the country as they said it was the cause of the War, and
the Curse of our Country & the foe of the body of the people--the
poor whites. They knew the Slave masters got up the war expressly in
the interests of the institution, & with no real cause from the
Government or the North."
- The Vidette was
a camp newspaper for Confederate
Brig. Gen. John Hunt Morgan's cavalry brigade. In one of the November,
1862 issues, the following appeared: "It is a hard matter to get
a Union man to acknowledge that this is an abolition war. He will say
to you; 'If I thought this was a war for the abolition of slavery, I
would not only lay down my arms which I have taken up for the defense
of the Union, but I would go into the Southern army...many in the
western states speak the same way. Now, any man who pretends to believe
that this is not a war for the emancipation of the blacks, and that the
whole course of the Yankee government has not only been directed to the
abolition of slavery, but even to a stirring up of servile
insurrections, is either a fool or a liar." [My thanks to Lee
White, Park Service Ranger at Chickamauga-Chattanooga National Military
Park, for providing me with this.]
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